Quotes by Irish Authors - Page 42

…The more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader.
Oliver Goldsmith
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Edmund Burke
What was after the universe?Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?
James Joyce
She thought it was strange that the mere sensation of savouring the prospect of something could make her think for a while that is must be the prospect of home.
Colm Tóibín
I know what you might be thinking here on your own, but those thoughts won’t last for ever,’ I said. ‘You won’t always feel like this. This will pass. Homer will be here for you, and the sun will rise and you’ll find your reasons again. The ones you think have deserted you. Isn’t that right, Meg?
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
The character, therefore, will depend upon the thoughts. I am what I think. I am what I think even more than what I do, for it is the thought that interprets the action. An act in itself good may become even bad by the thought that inspired it.
Basil W. Maturin
There is not, perhaps, a more painful exercise of the mind than that of treading, with weary and impatient pace, the entire round of thought, and arriving at the same conclusion for ever; then setting out again with increased speed and diminished strength, and again returning to the very same spot - of sending all our faculties on a voyage to discover, and seeing them all return empty, and watch the wrecks as they drift helplessly along, and sink before the eye that hailed their outward expedition with joy and confidence.
Charles Maturin
I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I went to the room in my brain where all my thoughts about Adam lived and disconnected the electricity and boarded up all the doors and windows, so nothing could get out.Obviously it was very unsightly. There were bound to be complaints from the neighboring thoughts. But I had no choice.
Marian Keyes
Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children.
Iris Murdoch
In the travellers’ world, social media have enlarged the generation gap. The internet has brought a change in the very concept of travel as a process taking one away from the familiar into the unknown. Now the familiar is not left behind and the unknown has become familiar even before one leaves home. Unpredictability – to my generation the salt that gave travelling its savour – seems unnecessary if not downright irritating to many of the young. The sunset challenge – where to sleep? – has been banished by the ease of booking into a hostel or organised campsite with a street plan provided by the internet. Moreover, relatives and friends evidently expect regular reassurance about the traveller’s precise location and welfare – and vice versa, the traveller needing to know that all is well back home. Notoriously, dependence on instant communication with distant family and friends is known to stunt the development of self-reliance. Perhaps that is why, amongst younger travellers, one notices a new timidity.
Dervla Murphy
Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.
Oscar Wilde
Early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically.
James Joyce
It's like rock n' roll for your eyes.
Paul Howard
There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?
James Joyce
No one likes a straight road but the man who pays for it, or who, when he travels, is brute enough to wish to get to his journey's end.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.
Frank Delaney
Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.
Elizabeth Bowen
There's a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we've left it.
Colum McCann
Selfishness is easy to find. Selflessness is a much rarer beast.
Stewart Stafford
Jusging by the sour glance she threw on me as she said this, I concluded that I represented those 'late changes' to which all the sorrows of the house were referred. I felt unhappy under the ill-will even of this odious old woman, being one of those unhappily constructed mortals who cannot be indifferent when they reasonably ought, and always yearn after kindness, even that of the worthless.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Brendan Behan
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
Oscar Wilde
Don't be afraid to make corrections," Picchu said. "Don't be afraid to lend a hand." She fell silent, seeming to think for a moment. "And don't look down.
Diane Duane
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
W.B. Yeats
Honesty, vulnerability and a good amount of courageous faith allows you to cry out in your bewilderment and not lose your belief in the process. These things allow you to wrestle your faith rather than lose it.
Bono
David was "a star, the Elvis of the Bible." An unusually for such a rockstar with his lust for power, lust for women, lust for life, he had humility of one who knew his gift work harder than he ever would.
Bono
The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another's pain as one's own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.
John Connolly
People will come to test and divide us, but, as long as we keep compassion in our hearts for others, they won't win.
Stewart Stafford
See this abdicated beast, once kingOf them all, nibble his claws:Not anger enough left—no, nor despair—To break his teeth on the bars.
Cecil Day-Lewis
The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: It's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do.
John Connolly
How would I know what Jesus would have done? That fella was a mass of contradictions as far as I can see. One minute he says to turn the other cheek, the next minute he's having a big strop and kicking over lads' market stalls. He says blessed are the meek and he goes around shouting and roaring the odds to everyone. He rises from the dead and then shags off a few weeks later and leaves his buddies in the shit.
Donal Ryan
The simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the (investigations) disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Lord, forgive us for the times we have read about Gethsemane with dry eyes.
Frederick S. Leahy
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild' is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.
George Bernard Shaw
We're going nowhere, " Joan said grimly. Traffic on the narrow street was at a complete standstill.A chill settled in Sophie's stomach: it was the appalling fear that her brother was going to die."Sidewalk," Nicholas said decisively. "Take it.""But the pedestrians—""Can get out of the way. Use your horn.
Michael Scott
One misspoken word and the world will no longer know you. Mark Andrew Ramsay
Brendan Carroll
I’ve long believed that the gods give us the music we’re supposed to hear at the times we’re supposed to hear it, because all music, even lyrical and regardless of language performed in, is in and of itself an inherently magical language that can, at proper times, speak to the soul.
Ruadhán J. McElroy
My path will weaveThe way you sayThere is no doubtYou'll create the way
William O'Brien
Many years ago, plunging was discovered when the moon was in two halves- it's all about dreams, you see
William O'Brien
Listen with an open heart
William O'Brien
I am here because I have to be here, as here I am supposed to be! All things should be, and usually are, found in their rightful places. Can you imagine how chaotic the world would be if nothing was in its correct place?
William O'Brien
Devic MagicWoodland sprites, elves and nymphsWaltz in time take a glimpseFairies hide the forest witMushrooms fly, agarics hit
William O'Brien
Devil’s WishA bowl of spellsSwirls a mixSmoke and bubblesSeek the fixYoung boy's eyeAnd fever fewWitches grassSome mandrake root
William O'Brien
PeterSwirling dreamsDragons knewTouching life to winDeep inside many other worldsWhere should we begin?
William O'Brien
And what about magic?” “What about it?” “Will you teach me?” “You don’t even know if you’re capable of doing magic.” “How do I find out? Is there a test or something?”“Yes, we cut off your head. If it grows back, you can do magic.
Derek Landy
There is no such thing as magic. It is a word. A silly, foolish, overused word. There is only your aura...or the Chinese have a better word for it: qi. A life force. An energy. This is the energy that flows within you. It can be shaped, molded, directed.
Michael Scott
The unknown is sexier that the revealed. All magic tricks are a disappointment once you learn how they’re done.
L.H. Cosway
In the ghost house in the last days of the accident season, we were never going to die.
Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he stood on the sand with his back to the moon, and out of the foam came white arms that beckoned to him, and out of the waves rose dim forms that did him homage. Before him lay his shadow, which was the body of his Soul, and behind him hung the moon in the honey-coloured air.
Oscar Wilde
Round these men stories tended to group themselves, sometimes deserting more ancient heroes for the purpose. Round poets have they gathered especially, for poetry in Ireland has always been mysteriously connected with magic.
W.B. Yeats
And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.
Lord Dunsany
I only wish you could spend just five minutes beneath my skin and feel what it’s like. Feel the savage swarming magic I feel.
Claire-Louise Bennett
Want me to flex my magic for you, baby?
Sarah Rees Brennan
Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses. Humans have cut themselves off from their senses. Now they see only a tiny portion of the visible spectrum, hear only the loudest of sounds, their sense of smell is shockingly poor and they can only distinguish the sweetest and sourest of tastes.
Michael Scott
You must learn to heed your senses. Humans use but a tiny percentage of theirs. They barely look, they rarely listen, they never smell, and they think that they can only experience feelings through their skin. But they talk, oh, do they talk.
Michael Scott
So why not live with the magic? Be a kid again and believe in the fantastical. Life is more fun with a little smoke and mirrors.
L.H. Cosway
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
W.B. Yeats
And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of
Sebastian Barry
Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.
Frank McCourt
One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.
Colum McCann